This invention relates to the practice of revenue management, which is the process of dynamically adjusting prices of goods or services in response to changes in market conditions or changes in supply conditions. Revenue management processes were pioneered by the passenger airline industry and have been imitated by other industries such as cargo airlines, hotels, rentals, shippers, advertisement brokers and others.
A very common application of revenue management relates to service providers who are taking reservation for “date-constrained services”. By “date-constrained services,” we mean that the provider will impose transaction-specific limits on the date when the buyer may use the service they purchase. Examples of such a restrictions include specified arrival and departure dates for an airline reservation as well as specified check-in and check-out dates for a hotel reservation. Airline and hotel reservations do represent a “date-constrained service” because the customer is required to use their ticket on a specific date, which was selected by the customer at the time of the purchase or transaction or reservation. Hotel reservations, rental reservations and media advertisement slots are also “date-constrained services” for precisely the same reason. In cases where the date constraint is not firm, such as an airline ticket that may be rescheduled with or without penalty, we still consider the purchase to be “date-constrained” if a payment or process, such as rebooking, is needed to alter the date constraint.
A multitude of processes and methods have been designed to address the problem of optimizing price of buying or reserving a date-constrained service. Some of these are described in the following patents and journal publications, which are believed to be relevant to the present invention:
U.S. patents5,918,209June 1999Campbell, et al.5,652,867July 1997Barlow, et al.